European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352

www.elsevier.com/locate/ejor

q
The affect heuristic
Paul Slovic *, Melissa L. Finucane, Ellen Peters, Donald G. MacGregor
Decision Research Inc., 1201 Oak Street, Suite 200, Eugene, OR 97401, USA

Available online 16 October 2006

Abstract

This paper introduces a theoretical framework that describes the importance of affect in guiding judgments and deci-
sions. As used here, ‘‘affect’’ means the specific quality of ‘‘goodness’’ or ‘‘badness’’ (i) experienced as a feeling state
(with or without consciousness) and (ii) demarcating a positive or negative quality of a stimulus. Affective responses
occur rapidly and automatically—note how quickly you sense the feelings associated with the stimulus word ‘‘treasure’’
or the word ‘‘hate’’. We argue that reliance on such feelings can be characterized as ‘‘the affect heuristic’’. In this paper
we trace the development of the affect heuristic across a variety of research paths followed by ourselves and many oth-
ers. We also discuss some of the important practical implications resulting from ways that this heuristic impacts our
daily lives.
Ó 2002 Cambridge University Press. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Keywords: Affect heuristic; Judgment; Decision making; Risk perception

1. Background nized as an important component of human judg-

Although affect has long played a key role in
many behavioral theories, it has rarely been recog-
q
Reprinted from Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., Kahneman, D.
(Eds.), 2002. Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive
Judgment. Cambridge University Press, New York. pp. 397–
420. Ó Cambridge University Press 2002. Reprinted with per-
mission. Financial support for the writing of this paper was
provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant SES
9876587.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 541 485 2400; fax: +1 541
485 2403.
E-mail address: pslovic@oregon.uoregon.edu (P. Slovic).
URL: http://www.decisionresearch.org (P. Slovic).
ment and decision making. Perhaps befitting its
rationalistic origins, the main focus of descriptive
decision research has been cognitive, rather than
affective. When principles of utility maximization
appeared to be descriptively inadequate, Simon
(1956) oriented the field toward problem solving
and information-processing models based upon
bounded rationality. The work of Tversky and
Kahneman (1974) and Kahneman et al. (1982)
demonstrated how boundedly rational individuals
employ heuristics such as availability, representa-
tiveness, and anchoring and adjustment to make
judgments and how they use simplified strategies
such as ‘‘elimination by aspects’’ to make choices

0377-2217/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Cambridge University Press. Published by Elsevier B.V.
doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2005.04.006
1334 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
(Tversky, 1972). Other investigators elaborated the
cognitive strategies underlying judgment and
choice through models of constructed preferences
(Slovic, 1995; Payne et al., 1993), dominance struc-
turing (Montgomery, 1983), and comparative
advantages (Shafir et al., 1989). In 1993, the entire
volume of the journal Cognition was dedicated to
the topic, Reason-Based Choice, in which it was
argued that ‘‘Decisions . . . are often reached by
focusing on reasons that justify the selection of
one option over another’’ (Shafir et al., 1993, p.
34). Similarly, a state-of-the-art review by Buse-
meyer et al. (1995) was titled ‘‘Decision Making
from a Cognitive Perspective’’. In keeping with
its title, it contained almost no references to the
influence of affect on decisions.
Despite this cognitive emphasis, the importance
of affect is being recognized increasingly by deci-
sion researchers. A limited role for affect was
acknowledged by Shafir et al. (1993) who conceded
that ‘‘People’s choices may occasionally stem from
affective judgments that preclude a thorough eval-
uation of the options’’ (p. 32, emphasis added).
A strong early proponent of the importance of
affect in decision making was Zajonc (1980), who
argued that affective reactions to stimuli are often
the very first reactions, occurring automatically
and subsequently guiding information processing
and judgment. According to Zajonc, all percep-
tions contain some affect. ‘‘We do not just see ‘a
house’: We see a handsome house, an ugly house,
or a pretentious house’’ (p. 154). He later adds,
‘‘We sometimes delude ourselves that we proceed
in a rational manner and weight all the pros and
cons of the various alternatives. But this is proba-
bly seldom the actual case. Quite often ‘‘I decided
in favor of X’’ is no more than ‘‘I liked X . . .’’ We
buy the cars we ‘‘like’’, choose the jobs and houses
we find ‘‘attractive’’, and then justify these choices
by various reasons. . .’’ (p. 155).
Affect also plays a central role in what have
come to be known as ‘‘dual-process theories’’ of
thinking, knowing, and information processing.
As Epstein (1994), has observed,
There is no dearth of evidence in every day life that
people apprehend reality in two fundamentally dif-
ferent ways, one variously labeled intuitive, auto-
matic, natural, nonverbal, narrative, and
experiential, and the other analytical, deliberative,
verbal, and rational. (p. 710)
One of the characteristics of the experiential
system is its affective basis. Although analysis is
certainly important in some decision-making cir-
cumstances, reliance on affect and emotion is a
quicker, easier, and more efficient way to navigate
in a complex, uncertain, and sometimes dangerous
world. Many theorists have given affect a direct
and primary role in motivating behavior. Epstein’s
(1994) view on this is as follows:
The experiential system is assumed to be intimately
associated with the experience of affect, . . . which
refer[s] to subtle feelings of which people are often
unaware. When a person responds to an emotion-
ally significant event . . . the experiential system
automatically searches its memory banks for
related events, including their emotional accompa-
niments . . . If the activated feelings are pleasant,
they motivate actions and thoughts anticipated to
reproduce the feelings. If the feelings are unpleas-
ant, they motivate actions and thoughts antici-
pated to avoid the feelings. (p. 716)
Also emphasizing the motivational role of
affect, Mowrer (1960a,b) conceptualized condi-
tioned emotional responses to images as prospec-
tive gains and losses that directly ‘‘guide and
control performance in a generally sensible adap-
tive manner’’ (1960a, p. 30). He criticized theorists
who postulate purely cognitive variables such as
expectancies (probabilities) intervening between
stimulus and response, cautioning that we must
be careful not to leave the organism at the choice
point ‘‘lost in thought’’. Mowrer’s solution was
to view expectancies more dynamically (as condi-
tioned emotions such as hopes and fears) serving
as motivating states leading to action.
One of the most comprehensive and dramatic
theoretical accounts of the role of affect in decision
making is presented by the neurologist, Antonio
Damasio (1994), in his book Descartes’ Error:
Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Damasio’s
theory is derived from observations of patients
with damage to the ventromedial frontal cortices
of the brain that has left their basic intelligence,
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
memory, and capacity for logical thought intact
but has impaired their ability to ‘‘feel’’—that is,
to associate affective feelings and emotions with
the anticipated consequences of their actions.
Close observation of these patients combined with
a number of experimental studies led Damasio to
argue that this type of brain damage induces a
form of sociopathy (Damasio et al., 1990) that
destroys the individual’s ability to make rational
decisions; that is, decisions that are in his or her
best interests. Persons suffering this damage
became socially dysfunctional even though they
remain intellectually capable of analytical
reasoning.
Commenting on one particularly significant
case, Damasio observes:
The instruments usually considered necessary and
sufficient for rational behavior were intact in
him. He had the requisite knowledge, attention,
and memory; his language was flawless; he could
perform calculations; he could tackle the logic of
an abstract problem. There was only one signifi-
cant accompaniment to his decision-making fail-
ure: a marked alteration of the ability to
experience feelings. Flawed reason and impaired
feelings stood out together as the consequences
of a specific brain lesion, and this correlation sug-
gested to me that feeling was an integral compo-
nent of the machinery of reason. (p. XII)
In seeking to determine ‘‘what in the brain
allows humans to behave rationally’’, Damasio
argues that thought is made largely from images,
broadly construed to include sounds, smells, real
or imagined visual impressions, ideas, and words.
A lifetime of learning leads these images to become
‘‘marked’’ by positive and negative feelings linked
directly or indirectly to somatic or bodily states
(Mowrer and other learning theorists would call
this conditioning): ‘‘In short, somatic markers
are . . . feelings generated from secondary emotions.
These emotions and feelings have been connected,
by learning, to predicted future outcomes of certain
scenarios’’ (Damasio, 1994, p. 174). When a nega-
tive somatic marker is linked to an image of a
future outcome it sounds an alarm. When a posi-
tive marker is associated with the outcome image,
it becomes a beacon of incentive. Damasio con-
1335
cludes that somatic markers increase the accuracy
and efficiency of the decision process and their
absence degrades decision performance.
Damasio tested the somatic marker hypothesis
in a decision making experiment in which subjects
gambled by selecting cards from any of four decks.
Turning each card resulted in the gain or loss of a
sum of money, as revealed on the back of the card
when it was turned. Whereas normal subjects and
patients with brain lesions outside the prefrontal
sectors learned to avoid decks with attractive large
payoffs but occasional catastrophic losses, patients
with frontal lobe damage did not, thus losing a
great deal of money. Although these patients
responded normally to gains and losses when they
occurred (as indicated by skin conductance
responses immediately after an outcome was expe-
rienced) they did not seem to learn to anticipate
future outcomes (e.g., they did not produce nor-
mal skin conductance responses when contemplat-
ing a future choice from a dangerous deck). In
other words, they failed to show any proper antic-
ipatory responses, even after numerous opportuni-
ties to learn them.
Despite the increasing popularity of affect in
research programs and recent attempts to
acknowledge the importance of the interplay
between affect and cognition, further work is
needed to specify the role of affect in judgment
and decision making. The ideas articulated below
are intended as a step toward encouraging the
development of theory about affect and decision
making and demonstrating how such a theory
can be tested.
The basic tenet of this paper is that images,
marked by positive and negative affective feelings,
guide judgment and decision making. Specifically,
it is proposed that people use an affect heuristic to
make judgments. That is, representations of
objects and events in people’s minds are tagged
to varying degrees with affect. In the process of
making a judgment or decision, people consult or
refer to an ‘‘affect pool’’ containing all the positive
and negative tags consciously or unconsciously
associated with the representations. Just as imagi-
nability, memorability, and similarity serve as cues
for probability judgments (e.g., the availability
and representativeness heuristics), affect may serve
1336 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
as a cue for many important judgments. Using an
overall, readily available affective impression can
be far easier—more efficient—than weighing the
pros and cons or retrieving from memory many
relevant examples, especially when the required
judgment or decision is complex or mental
resources are limited. This characterization of a
mental short-cut leads to labeling the use of affect
a ‘‘heuristic’’.
2. Empirical evidence
2.1. Manipulating preferences through controlled
exposures
The fundamental nature and importance of
affect has been demonstrated repeatedly in a
remarkable series of studies by Robert Zajonc
and his colleagues (see, e.g., Zajonc, 1968). The
concept of stimulus exposure is central to all of
these studies. The central finding is that, when
objects are presented to an individual repeatedly,
the ‘‘mere exposure’’ is capable of creating a posi-
tive attitude or preference for these objects.
In the typical study, stimuli such as nonsense
phrases, or faces, or Chinese ideographs are pre-
sented to an individual with varying frequencies.
In a later session, the individual judges these stim-
uli on liking, or familiarity, or both. The more fre-
quent the prior exposure to a stimulus, the more
positive the response. A meta-analysis by Born-
stein (1989) of mere exposure research published
between 1968 and 1987 included over 200 experi-
ments examining the exposure–affect relationship.
Unreinforced exposures were found to reliably
enhance affect toward visual, auditory, gustatory,
abstract, and social stimuli.
Winkielman et al. (1997) demonstrated the
speed with which affect can influence judgments
in studies employing a subliminal priming para-
digm. Participants were ‘‘primed’’ through expo-
sure to a smiling face, a frowning face, or a
neutral polygon presented for 1/250 of a second,
an interval so brief that there is no recognition
or recall of the stimulus. Immediately following
this exposure, an ideograph was presented for
two seconds, following which the participant rated
the ideograph on a scale of liking. Mean liking rat-
ings were significantly higher for ideographs pre-
ceded by smiling faces. This effect was lasting. In
a second session, ideographs were primed by the
‘‘other face’’, the one not associated with the stim-
ulus in the first session. This second priming was
ineffective because the effect of the first priming
remained.
It is not just subliminal smiles that affect our
judgment. La France and Hecht (1995) found that
students accused of academic misconduct who
were pictured as smiling received less punishment
than nonsmiling transgressors. Smiling persons
were judged as more trustworthy, good, honest,
genuine, obedient, blameless, sincere, and admira-
ble than nonsmiling targets.
The perseverance of induced preferences was
tested by Sherman et al. (1998) who asked partic-
ipants to study Chinese characters and their Eng-
lish meanings. Half of the meanings were positive
(e.g., beauty), half were negative (e.g., disease).
Then participants were given a test of these mean-
ings followed by a task in which they were given
pairs of characters and were asked to choose the
one they preferred. Participants preferred charac-
ters with positive meaning 70% of the time. Next,
the characters were presented with neutral mean-
ings (desk, linen) and subjects were told that these
were the ‘‘true’’ meanings. The testing procedure
was repeated and, despite learning the new mean-
ings, the preferences remained the same. Charac-
ters that had been initially paired with positive
meanings still tended to be preferred.
These various studies demonstrate that affect is
a strong conditioner of preference, whether or not
the cause of that affect is consciously perceived.
They also demonstrate the independence of affect
from cognition, indicating that there may be con-
ditions of affective or emotional arousal that do
not necessarily require cognitive appraisal. This
affective mode of response, unburdened by cogni-
tion and hence much faster, has considerable
adaptive value.
2.2. Evaluating gambles
The affect heuristic can explain a finding that
has intrigued and perplexed the first author since
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
he first observed it in 1984. Slovic and Amos Tver-
sky were reexamining the early studies of Slovic
and Lichtenstein (1968) and Lichtenstein and Slo-
vic (1971, 1973), which pointed at compatibility
between stimulus attributes and response scales
as an explanation for preference reversals. Such
reversals were exhibited when an individual chose
Gamble A (with a high probability of winning a
modest amount of money) over Gamble B (with
a smaller probability of a larger payoff) but
assigned a larger monetary value (buying price or
selling price) to Gamble B. Presumably the rever-
sal occurred because the gamble payoffs were given
more weight in the pricing response mode than in
choice, due to the compatibility between prices and
payoffs, both of which were measured in dollars.
Tversky and Slovic decided to replicate the ear-
lier reversal studies with three changes:
1. The complexity of the gamble was minimized
by eliminating losses. Each gamble consisted
merely of a stated probability of winning a given
amount. There was no possible loss of money.
2. Following Goldstein (later Goldstein and
Einhorn, 1987), who observed reversals with rat-
ings and prices, we included ratings of a gamble’s
attractiveness along with choices and pricing as
methods of eliciting preferences. The attractiveness
scale ranged between 0 (not at all attractive) and
20 (very attractive).
3. To ensure the strategic equivalence of our
three elicitation procedures, we devised a method
for linking preferences to outcomes that was iden-
tical across all conditions. Subjects were told that a
pair of bets would be selected and the bet that
received the higher attractiveness rating (or the
higher price, or that was preferred in the choice
task) would be the bet they would play. Conse-
quently, the preferences elicited by prices and rat-
ings should not differ from each other or from the
preferences elicited by direct choices. Some of the
gambles were, in fact, actually played.
Using this design, we observed strong differ-
ences between response modes, leading to many
preference reversals. Particularly striking was the
difference between ratings and prices. Ratings pro-
duced an overwhelming dominance of high proba-
bility bets over high payoff bets (the bet with
higher probability of winning had the higher
1337
attractiveness rating 80–90% of the time, but was
assigned a higher price only 10–15% of the time).
The mean evaluations of the following two bets
were typical:
Mean Mean
Price Rating (0–20 scale)
29/36 to win $2 $1.25 13.2
7/36 to win $9 $2.11 7.5
Seeking to explain these results in terms of com-
patibility, we linked the compatibility effect to the
ease of mapping the stimulus component of a gam-
ble onto the response scale. The easier it is to exe-
cute such a mapping, the greater the weight given
the component. In principle, a gamble’s payoff is
more compatible with a price response than with
a rating, because prices and payoffs are both
expressed in dollars. Hence payoffs should get
greater weight in pricing than in rating. The extre-
mely high weight given probabilities when rating
attractiveness may be explained by the fact that
the probabilities are more readily coded as attrac-
tive or unattractive than are the payoffs. For
example, 29 out of 36 chances to win are very
attractive odds. On the other hand, a $9 payoff
may be harder to map on a rating scale because
its attractiveness depends on what other payoffs
are available.
According to this explanation, if we could make
a gamble’s payoff more compatible with the attrac-
tiveness rating, we would presumably enhance the
weight given to payoff in the rating response mode.
We attempted to do this in a new experiment,
focusing on the gamble 7/36 to win $9. To make
the payoff more compatible with regard to the
scale of attractiveness, we added a very small loss
(5¢) to the gamble
7=36 win $9;
29=36 lose 5!.
Whereas the attractiveness of $9 might not be
readily apparent, we reasoned that a bet offering
$9 to win and only 5¢ to lose should appear to
have a very attractive payoff ratio. This led us to
1338 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
predict that one might increase the attractiveness
of a gamble (p to win X) by adding a loss compo-
nent to it.
The results exceeded our expectations. The
gamble with no loss had the lower attractiveness
rating (mean = 9.4 on the 0–20 scale). Adding a
5¢ loss led to a much higher attractiveness rating
(mean = 14.9). Even the bet
7=36 win $9;
29=36 lose 25!.
was judged more attractive (mean = 11.7) than the
bet with no loss.
Would adding a small loss to the gamble
enhance its attractiveness in choice as it did in rat-
ing? We recently addressed this question by asking
96 University of Oregon students to choose
between playing a gamble, and receiving a gain
of $2. For half of the students, the gamble was
7/36 to win $9; for the others, the gamble had
the 5¢ loss. Whereas only 33.3% chose the $9 gam-
ble over the $2, 60.8% chose the ($9; 5¢) gamble
over the $2. A replication study with $4 as the
alternative to the gamble produced similar results.
The enhancement produced by adding a small loss
thus holds for choices as well as for rating
responses.
The enhanced attractiveness produced by small
losses was originally predicted and explained in
terms of compatibility, and we now see it also as
an example of the affect heuristic. This broader
perspective was induced, in part, by results
obtained later by Mellers et al. (1992) and Hsee
(1995, 1996a,b, 1998) and by our own subsequent
studies of imagery, affect, and decision making.
These convergent streams of research are described
in the following sections.
2.3. Image, affect, and decision making
The early anomalous findings with gambles
were laid aside while other means of explaining
the differences between ratings, choices, and pric-
ing responses were developed (see Tversky et al.,
1990). At the same time, Slovic and colleagues at
Decision Research embarked on a research pro-
gram designed to test whether introducing a haz-
ardous facility into a region might stigmatize
that region and cause people to avoid going there
to recreate, retire, or do business. Believing self-
report to be unreliable (‘‘If they build it, will you
not come?’’), research on stigmatization was con-
ducted through a number of empirical studies
designed to examine the relationship between
imagery, affect, and decision making. After con-
ducting these studies, we learned that they fit clo-
sely with a large body of existing theory and
research such as the work of Damasio, Mowrer,
and Epstein, described earlier.
Several empirical studies have demonstrated a
strong relationship between imagery, affect, and
decision making. Many of these studies used a
word-association technique. This method involves
presenting subjects with a target stimulus, usually
a word or very brief phrase, and asking them to
provide the first thought or image that comes to
mind. The process is then repeated a number of
times, say three to six, or until no further associa-
tions are generated. Following the elicitation of
images, subjects are asked to rate each image they
give on a scale ranging from very positive (e.g.,
+2) to very negative (e.g., 2), with a neutral point
in the center. Scoring is done by summing or aver-
aging the ratings to obtain an overall index.
This imagery method has been used successfully
to measure the affective meanings that influence
people’s preferences for different cities and states
(Slovic et al., 1991), as well as their support or
opposition to technologies such as nuclear power
(Peters and Slovic, 1996).
Table 1 illustrates the method in a task where
one respondent was asked to give associations to
each of two cities and, later, to rate each image
affectively. The cities in this example show a clear
affective preference for San Diego over Denver.
Slovic et al. (1991) showed that summed image
scores such as these were highly predictive of
expressed preferences for living in or visiting cities.
In one study they found that the image score pre-
dicted the location of actual vacations during the
next 18 months.
Subsequent studies have found affect-laden
imagery elicited by word associations to be predic-
tive of preferences for investing in new companies
on the stock market (MacGregor et al., 2000) and
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352 1339

Table 1 How much would you like a roommate said to

Images, ratings, and summation scores for one respondent be both intelligent and obnoxious? Anderson
Stimulus Image Image Image (1981) has shown that the integration of multiple
number rating pieces of information into an impression of this
San Diego 1 Very nice 2 sort can be described well by a weighted average
San Diego 2 Good beaches 2 model where separate weights are given to intelli-
San Diego 3 Zoo 2
San Diego 4 Busy freeway 1
gence and obnoxiousness, respectively. Mellers
San Diego 5 Easy to find way 1 et al. (1992) further showed that the weights in
San Diego 6 Pretty town 2 such integrative tasks are inversely proportional
Sum = 10 to the variance of the impressions. Thus we would
expect the impression produced by the combina-
Denver 1 High 2 tion of these two traits to be closer to the impres-
Denver 2 Crowded 0 sion formed by obnoxiousness alone, reflecting
Denver 3 Cool 2 greater weight given to obnoxiousness due to its
Denver 4 Pretty 1
Denver 5 Busy airport 2
smaller variance (more precise affective mapping).
Denver 6 Busy streets 2 The meaning of a stimulus image appears to be
reflected in the precision of the affective feelings
Sum = 1
associated with that image. More precise affective
Note: Based on these summation scores, this person’s predicted
impressions reflect more precise meanings and
preference for a vacation site would be San Diego. Source:
Slovic et al. (1991). carry more weight in impression formation, judg-
ment, and decision making.
predictive of adolescents’ decisions to take part in Hsee (1996a,b, 1998) has developed the notion
health-threatening and health-enhancing behav- of evaluability to describe the interplay between
iors such as smoking and exercise (Benthin et al., the precision of an affective impression and its
1995). meaning or importance for judgment and decision
making. Evaluability is illustrated by an experi-
2.4. Evaluability ment in which Hsee asked people to assume they
were music majors looking for a used music dictio-
The research with images points to the impor- nary. In a joint-evaluation condition, participants
tance of affective impressions in judgments and were shown two dictionaries, A and B (see Table
decisions. However, the impressions themselves 2), and asked how much they would be willing to
may vary not only in their valence but in the pre- pay for each. Willingness-to-pay was far higher
cision with which they are held. It turns out that for Dictionary B, presumably because of its greater
the precision of an affective impression substan- number of entries. However, when one group of
tially impacts judgments. participants evaluated only A and another group
We shall refer to the distributional qualities of evaluated only B, the mean willingness to pay
affective impressions and responses as ‘‘affective was much higher for Dictionary A. Hsee explains
mappings’’. Consider, for example, some questions
posed by Mellers et al. (1992): ‘‘How much would
you like a potential roommate if all you knew Table 2
about her was that she was said to be intelligent?’’ Attributes of two dictionaries in Hsee’s study
Or, ‘‘Suppose, instead, all you knew about her was Year of Number of Any defects?
that she was said to be obnoxious?’’ Intelligence is publication entries
a favorable trait but it is not very diagnostic (e.g., Dictionary A 1993 10,000 No, it’s like new
meaningful) for likeableness, hence its affective Dictionary B 1993 20,000 Yes, the cover is
map is rather diffuse. In contrast, obnoxiousness torn; otherwise it’s
will likely produce a more precise and more nega- like new
tive impression. Source: Adapted from Hsee (1998).
1340 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
this reversal by means of the evaluability principle.
He argues that, without a direct comparison, the
number of entries is hard to evaluate, because the
evaluator does not have a precise notion of how
good or how bad 10,000 (or 20,000) entries is. How-
ever, the defects attribute is evaluable in the sense
that it translates easily into a precise good/bad
response and thus it carries more weight in the
independent evaluation. Most people find a defec-
tive dictionary unattractive and a like-new one
attractive. Under joint evaluation, the buyer can
see that B is far superior on the more important
attribute, number of entries. Thus number of
entries becomes evaluable through the comparison
process.
According to the evaluability principle, the
weight of a stimulus attribute in an evaluative
judgment or choice is proportional to the ease or
precision with which the value of that attribute
(or a comparison on the attribute across alterna-
tives) can be mapped into an affective impression.
In other words, affect bestows meaning on infor-
mation (cf., Osgood et al., 1957; Mowrer,
1960a,b) and the precision of the affective meaning
influences our ability to use information in judg-
ment and decision making. Evaluability can thus
be seen as an extension of the general relationship
between the variance of an impression and its
weight in an impression-formation task (Mellers
et al., 1992).
Hsee’s work in evaluability is noteworthy
because it shows that even very important attri-
butes may not be used by a judge or decision
maker unless they can be translated precisely into
an affective frame of reference. As described in
the next section, Hsee finds evaluability effects
even with familiar attributes such as the amount
of ice cream in a cup (Hsee, 1998). We will also
demonstrate similar effects with other familiar con-
cepts such as amounts of money or human lives.
2.5. Proportion dominance
In situations that involve uncertainty about
whether we will win or lose or that involve ambi-
guity about some quantity of something (i.e.,
how much is enough), there appears to be one
information format that is highly evaluable, lead-
ing it to carry great weight in many judgment
tasks. This is a representation characterizing an
attribute as a proportion or percentage of some-
thing, or as a probability. At the suggestion of
Chris Hsee (personal communication), we shall
refer to the strong effects of this type of represen-
tation as ‘‘proportion dominance’’.
Proportion (or probability) dominance was evi-
dent in the studies of gambles described at the
beginning of this paper. Ratings of a gamble’s
attractiveness tend to be determined far more
strongly by the probabilities of winning and losing
than by the monetary payoffs. The curious finding
that adding a small loss to a gamble increases its
rated attractiveness, explained originally as a com-
patibility effect, can now be seen to fit well with the
notions of affective mapping and evaluability.
According to this view, a probability maps rel-
atively precisely onto the attractiveness scale
because probability has a lower and upper bound
(0 and 1) and a midpoint below which a probabil-
ity is ‘‘poor’’ or ‘‘bad’’ (i.e., has worse than an even
chance) and above which it is ‘‘good’’ (i.e., has a
better than even chance). People know where a
given value, such as 7/36, falls within the bounds,
and exactly what it means—‘‘I’m probably not
going to win’’. In contrast, the mapping of a dollar
outcome (e.g., $9) onto the attractiveness scale is
diffuse, reflecting a failure to know how good or
bad or how attractive or unattractive $9 is. Thus,
the impression formed by the gamble offering $9
to win with no losing payoff is dominated by the
relatively precise and unattractive impression pro-
duced by the 7/36 probability of winning. How-
ever, adding a very small loss to the payoff
dimension brings the $9 payoff into focus and thus
gives it meaning. The combination of a possible $9
gain and a 5¢ loss is a very attractive win/loss ratio,
leading to a relatively precise mapping onto the
upper end of the scale. Whereas the imprecise
mapping of the $9 carries little weight in the aver-
aging process, the more precise and now favorable
impression of ($9; 5¢) carries more weight, thus
leading to an increase in the overall favorability
of the gamble.
The effect of adding a small loss to the gamble
can also be explained by norm theory (Kahneman
and Miller, 1986). But a norm-theoretical explana-
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352 1341

tion is consistent with an affective account. It
asserts that the gamble with no loss is a relatively
mediocre representative of the set of all positive
gambles whereas the gamble with a small loss is
a relatively attractive member of the class of mixed
(win/loss) gambles.
Proportion dominance surfaces in a powerful
way in a very different context, the life-saving inter-
ventions studied by Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997),
Baron (1997), Jenni and Loewenstein (1997) and
Friedrich et al. (1999). For example, Fetherston-
haugh et al. found that people’s willingness to inter-
vene to save a stated number of lives was
determined more by the proportion of lives saved
than by the actual number of lives that would be
saved. However, when two or more interventions
were directly compared, number of lives saved
become more important than proportion saved.
Thus, number of lives saved, standing alone,
appears to be poorly evaluable, as was the case
for number of entries in Hsee’s music dictionaries.
With a side-by-side comparison, the number of lives
became clearly evaluable and important, as also
happened with the number of dictionary entries.
Slovic (unpublished), drawing upon proportion
dominance and the limited evaluability of numbers
of lives, predicted (and found) that people, in a
between-groups design, would more strongly sup-
port an airport-safety measure expected to save
98% of 150 lives at risk than a measure expected
to save 150 lives. Saving 150 lives is diffusely good,
hence only weakly evaluable, whereas saving 98%
of something is clearly very good because it is so
close to the upper bound on the percentage scale,
and hence is readily evaluable and highly weighted
in the support judgment. Subsequent reduction of
the percentage of 150 lives that would be saved to
95%, 90%, and 85% led to reduced support for the
safety measure but each of these percentage condi-
tions still garnered a higher mean level of support
than did the save 150 lives condition (see Table 3).
Turning to a more mundane form of proportion
dominance, Hsee (1998) found that an overfilled
ice cream container with 7 oz. of ice cream was val-
ued more highly (measured by willingness to pay)
than an underfilled container with 8 oz. of ice
cream (see Fig. 1). This ‘‘less is better effect’’
reversed itself when the options were juxtaposed
and evaluated together. Thus, the proportion of
the serving cup that was filled appeared to be more
evaluable (in separate judgments) than the abso-
lute amount of ice cream.
2.6. Insensitivity to probability
Outcomes are not always affectively as vague as
the quantities of money, ice cream, and lives that
Fig. 1. Stimuli in ice cream study by Hsee (1998). Participants
were given the sizes of the cups and the amounts of ice cream.

Table 3
Proportion dominance and airport safety
Potential benefit
Save 150 lives Save 98% Save 95% Save 90% Save 85%
a
Mean support 10.4 13.6 12.9 11.7 10.9
Mediana 9.8 14.3 14.1 11.3 10.8
% of ratings P 13 37 75 69 35 31
Saving a percentage of 150 lives receives higher support ratings than does saving 150 lives.
a
Cell entries in these rows describe mean and median responses to the question: ‘‘How much would you support this proposed
measure to purchase the new equipment?’’ (Critics argue that the money spent on this system could be better spent enhancing other
aspects of airport safety). The response scale ranged from 0 (would not support at all) to 20 (very strong support). An overall ANOVA
resulted in F4200 = 3.36, p = .01. The save 98% and save 95% conditions were both significantly different from the save 150 lives
condition at p < .05, Tukey HSD test.
1342 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
were dominated by proportion in the above exper-
iments. When consequences carry sharp and
strong affective meaning, as is the case with a lot-
tery jackpot or a cancer, the opposite phenomenon
occurs—variation in probability often carries too
little weight. As Loewenstein et al. (2001) observe,
one’s images and feelings toward winning the lot-
tery are likely to be similar whether the probability
of winning is one in 10 million or one in 10,000.
They further note that responses to uncertain situ-
ations appear to have an all or none characteristic
that is sensitive to the possibility rather than the
probability of strong positive or negative conse-
quences, causing very small probabilities to carry
great weight. This, they argue, helps explain many
paradoxical findings such as the simultaneous
prevalence of gambling and the purchasing of
insurance. It also explains why societal concerns
about hazards such as nuclear power and exposure
to extremely small amounts of toxic chemicals fail
to recede in response to information about the
very small probabilities of the feared consequences
from such hazards. Support for these arguments
comes from Rottenstreich and Hsee (2001) who
show that, if the potential outcome of a gamble
is emotionally powerful, its attractiveness or unat-
tractiveness is relatively insensitive to changes in
probability as great as from 0.99 to 0.01.
2.7. Mid-course summary
We can now see that the puzzling finding of
increased attractiveness for the gambles to which
a loss was appended is part of a larger story that
can be summarized as follows:
1. Affect, attached to images, influences judg-
ments and decisions.
2. The evaluability of a stimulus image is
reflected in the precision of the affective feelings
associated with that image. More precise affective
impressions reflect more precise meanings (i.e.,
greater evaluability) and carry more weight in
impression formation, judgment, and decision
making.
3. The anomalous findings from the experi-
ments with gambles, ice cream preferences, and
life-saving interventions suggest that, without a
context to give affective perspective to quantities
of dollars, ice cream, and lives, these quantities
may convey little meaning. Amounts of anything,
no matter how common or familiar or intrinsically
important, may in some circumstances not be
evaluable.
4. Probabilities or proportions, on the other
hand, often are highly evaluable, reflecting the ease
with which people recognize that a high probabil-
ity of a desirable outcome is good and a low prob-
ability is bad. When the quantities or outcomes to
which these probabilities apply are affectively pal-
lid, probabilities carry much more weight in judg-
ments and decisions. However, just the opposite
occurs when the outcomes have precise and strong
affective meanings—variations in probability carry
too little weight.
2.8. The affect heuristic in judgments of risk and
benefit
Another stream of research that, in conjunction
with many of the findings reported above, led us to
propose the affect heuristic, had its origin in the
early study of risk perception reported by Fisch-
hoff et al. (1978). One of the findings in this study
and numerous subsequent studies was that percep-
tions of risk and society’s responses to risk were
strongly linked to the degree to which a hazard
evoked feelings of dread (see also Slovic, 1987).
Thus activities associated with cancer are seen as
riskier and more in need of regulation than activi-
ties associated with less dreaded forms of illness,
injury, and death (e.g., accidents).
A second finding in the study by Fischhoff et al.
has been even more instrumental in the study of
the affect heuristic. This is the finding that judg-
ments of risk and benefit are negatively correlated.
For many hazards, the greater the perceived bene-
fit, the lower the perceived risk and vice versa.
Smoking, alcoholic beverages, and food additives,
for example, tend to be seen as very high in risk
and relatively low in benefit, whereas vaccines,
antibiotics, and X-rays tend to be seen as high in
benefit and relatively low in risk. This negative
relationship is noteworthy because it occurs even
when the nature of the gains or benefits from an
activity is distinct, and qualitatively different from
the nature of the risks. That the inverse relation-
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352 1343

ship is generated in people’s minds is suggested by

Ó 2000: Copyright John Wiley and Sons

the fact that risk and benefits generally tend to be
positively (if at all) correlated in the world. Activ-

Ltd: Reprinted with permission:

ities that bring great benefits may be high or low in
risk but activities that are low in benefit are unli-
kely to be high in risk (if they were, they would
be proscribed).
A study by Alhakami and Slovic (1994) found
that the inverse relationship between perceived risk
and perceived benefit of an activity (e.g., using pes-
ticides) was linked to the strength of positive or
negative affect associated with that activity. This
result implies that people base their judgments of
an activity or a technology not only on what they
think about it but also on what they feel about it. If
they like an activity, they are moved to judge the
risks as low and the benefits as high; if they dislike
it, they tend to judge the opposite—high risk and
low benefit.
Alhakami and Slovic’s (1994) findings sug-
gested that use of the affect heuristic guides percep-
tions of risk and benefit as depicted in Fig. 2. If so,
Affect
Perceived Perceived
benefit risk
Fig. 2. A model of the affect heuristic explaining the risk/
benefit confounding observed by Alhakami and Slovic (1994).
Judgments of risk and benefit are assumed to be derived by
reference to an overall affective evaluation of the stimulus item.
Source: Finucane et al. (2000).
providing information about risk should change
the perception of benefit and vice-versa (see
Fig. 3). For example, information stating that risk
was low for some technology should lead to more
positive overall affect that would, in turn, increase
perceived benefit. Indeed, Finucane et al. (2000)

Ó 2000. Copyright John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Reprinted with permission.
A Nuclear Power B Nuclear Power

Positive Positive

Information says Risk inferred Information says Benefits

“Benefit is high”. to be low “Risk is low”. inferred to be
high

C Nuclear Power D Nuclear Power

Negative Negative

Information says Risk inferred Information says Benefit

“Benefit is low”. to be high “Risk is high”. inferred to be
low

Fig. 3. Model showing how information about benefit (A) or information about risk (B) could increase the overall affective evaluation
of nuclear power and lead to inferences about risk and benefit that coincide affectively with the information given. Similarly,
information could decrease the overall affective evaluation of nuclear power as in C and D. Source: Finucane et al. (2000).
1344 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
conducted this experiment, providing four differ-
ent kinds of information designed to manipulate
affect by increasing or decreasing perceived risk
and increasing or decreasing perceived benefit. In
each case there was no apparent logical relation
between the information provided (e.g., informa-
tion about risks) and the nonmanipulated variable
(e.g., benefits). The predictions were confirmed.
When the information that was provided changed
either the perceived risk or the perceived benefit,
an affectively congruent but inverse effect was
observed on the nonmanipulated attribute as
depicted in Fig. 3. These data support the theory
that risk and benefit judgments are causally deter-
mined, at least in part, by the overall affective
evaluation.
The affect heuristic also predicts that using time
pressure to reduce the opportunity for analytic
deliberation (and thereby allowing affective con-
siderations freer rein), should enhance the inverse
relationship between perceived benefits and risks.
In a second study, Finucane et al. showed that
the inverse relationship between perceived risks
and benefits increased greatly under time pressure,
as predicted. These two experiments with judg-
ments of benefits and risks are important because
they support the contention by Zajonc (1980) that
affect influences judgment directly and is not sim-
ply a response to a prior analytic evaluation.
Further support for the model in Fig. 2 has
come from two very different domains—toxicol-
ogy and finance. Slovic et al. (1999) surveyed mem-
bers of the British Toxicological Society and found
that these experts, too, produced the same inverse
relation between their risk and benefit judgments.
As expected, the strength of the inverse relation
was found to be mediated by these experts’ affec-
tive reactions toward the hazard items being
judged. In a second study, these same toxicologists
were asked to make a ‘‘quick intuitive rating’’ for
each of 30 chemical items (e.g., benzene, aspirin,
second hand cigarette smoke, dioxin in food) on
an affect scale (bad–good). Next, they were asked
to judge the degree of risk associated with a very
small exposure to the chemical, defined as an expo-
sure that is less than 1/100 of the exposure level
that would begin to cause concern for a regulatory
agency. Rationally, because exposure was so low,
one might expect these risk judgments to be uni-
formly low and unvarying, resulting in little or
no correlation with the ratings of affect. Instead,
there was a strong correlation across chemicals
between affect and judged risk of a very small
exposure. When the affect rating was strongly neg-
ative, judged risk of a very small exposure was
high; when affect was positive, judged risk was
small. Almost every respondent (95 out of 97)
showed this negative correlation (the median cor-
relation was 0.50). Importantly, those toxicolo-
gists who produced strong inverse relations
between risk and benefit judgments in the first
study also were more likely to exhibit a high corre-
spondence between their judgments of affect and
risk in the second study. In other words, across
two different tasks, reliable individual differences
emerged in toxicologists’ reliance on affective pro-
cesses in judgments of chemical risks.
In the realm of finance, Ganzach (2001) found
support for a model in which analysts base their
judgments of risk and return for unfamiliar stocks
upon a global attitude. If stocks were perceived as
good, they were judged to have high return and
low risk, whereas if they were perceived as bad,
they were judged to be low in return and high in
risk. However, for familiar stocks, perceived risk
and return were positively correlated, rather than
being driven by a global attitude.
2.9. Judgments of probability, relative frequency,
and risk
The affect heuristic has much in common with
the model of ‘‘risk as feelings’’ proposed by Loe-
wenstein et al. (2001) and with dual process theo-
ries put forth by Epstein (1994), Sloman (1996),
and others. Recall that Epstein argues that individ-
uals apprehend reality by two interactive, parallel
processing systems. The rational system is a delib-
erative, analytical system that functions by way of
established rules of logic and evidence (e.g., prob-
ability theory). The experiential system encodes
reality in images, metaphors, and narratives to
which affective feelings have become attached.
To demonstrate the influence of the experiential
system, Denes-Raj and Epstein (1994) showed that,
when offered a chance to win a prize by drawing a
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
red jelly bean from an urn, subjects often elected to
draw from a bowl containing a greater absolute
number, but a smaller proportion, of red beans
(e.g., 7 in 100) than from a bowl with fewer red
beans but a better probability of winning (e.g., 1
in 10). For these individuals, images of 7 winning
beans in the large bowl appeared to dominate the
image of 1 winning bean in the small bowl.
We can characterize Epstein’s subjects as fol-
lowing a mental strategy of ‘‘imaging the numera-
tor’’ (i.e., the number of red beans) and neglecting
the denominator (the number of beans in the
bowl). Consistent with the affect heuristic, images
of winning beans convey positive affect that moti-
vates choice.
Although the jelly bean experiment may seem
frivolous, imaging the numerator brings affect to
bear on judgments in ways that can be both non-
intuitive and consequential. Slovic et al. (2000)
demonstrated this in a series of studies in which
experienced forensic psychologists and psychia-
trists were asked to judge the likelihood that a
mental patient would commit an act of violence
within 6 months after being discharged from the
hospital. An important finding was that clinicians
who were given another expert’s assessment of a
patient’s risk of violence framed in terms of rela-
tive frequency (e.g., of every 100 patients similar
to Mr. Jones, 10 are estimated to commit an act
of violence to others . . .’’) subsequently labeled
Mr. Jones as more dangerous than did clinicians
who were shown a statistically ‘‘equivalent’’ risk
expressed as a probability (e.g., ‘‘Patients similar
to Mr. Jones are estimated to have a 10% chance
of committing an act of violence to others’’).
Not surprisingly, when clinicians were told that
‘‘20 out of every 100 patients similar to Mr. Jones
are estimated to commit an act of violence’’, 41%
would refuse to discharge the patient. But when
another group of clinicians was given the risk as
‘‘patients similar to Mr. Jones are estimated to
have a 20% chance of committing an act of vio-
lence’’, only 21% would refuse to discharge the
patient. Similar results have been found by
Yamagishi (1997), whose judges rated a disease
that kills 1286 people out of every 10,000 as more
dangerous than one that kills 24.14% of the
population.
1345
Unpublished follow-up studies showed that rep-
resentations of risk in the form of individual prob-
abilities of 10% or 20% led to relatively benign
images of one person, unlikely to harm anyone,
whereas the ‘‘equivalent’’ frequentistic representa-
tions created frightening images of violent patients
(example: ‘‘Some guy going crazy and killing
someone’’). These affect-laden images likely
induced greater perceptions of risk in response to
the relative-frequency frames.
Although frequency formats produce affect-
laden imagery, story and narrative formats appear
to do even better in that regard. Hendrickx et al.
(1989) found that warnings were more effective
when, rather than being presented in terms of rel-
ative frequencies of harm, they were presented in
the form of vivid, affect-laden scenarios and anec-
dotes. Sanfey and Hastie (1998) found that com-
pared with respondents given information in bar
graphs or data tables, respondents given narrative
information more accurately estimated the perfor-
mance of a set of marathon runners. Furthermore,
Pennington and Hastie (1993) found that jurors
construct narrative-like summations of trial evi-
dence to help them process their judgments of guilt
or innocence.
Perhaps the biases in probability and frequency
judgment that have been attributed to the avail-
ability heuristic may be due, at least in part, to
affect. Availability may work not only through
ease of recall or imaginability, but because remem-
bered and imagined images come tagged with
affect. For example, Lichtenstein et al. (1978)
invoked availability to explain why judged fre-
quencies of highly publicized causes of death
(e.g., accidents, homicides, fires, tornadoes, and
cancer) were relatively overestimated and under-
publicized causes (e.g., diabetes, stroke, asthma,
tuberculosis) were underestimated. The highly
publicized causes appear to be more affectively
charged, that is, more sensational, and this may
account both for their prominence in the media
and their relatively overestimated frequencies.
2.10. Further evidence
The studies described above represent only a
small fraction of the evidence that can be
1346 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
marshaled in support of the affect heuristic.
Although we have developed the affect heuristic
to explain findings from studies of judgment and
decision making (e.g., the inverse relationship
between perceived risks and benefits), one can find
related proposals in the literature of marketing
and social cognition. For example, Wright (1975)
proposed the ‘‘affect-referral heuristic’’ as a mech-
anism by which the remembered affect associated
with a product influences subsequent choice of
that product (see also Pham, 1998).
Attitudes have long been recognized as having a
strong evaluative component (see, e.g., Thurstone,
1928 or Edwards, 1957). Pratkanis (1989) defined
attitude as ‘‘a person’s evaluation of an object of
thought’’ (p. 72). He went on to propose that atti-
tudes serve as heuristics, with positive attitudes
invoking a favoring strategy toward an object
and negative attitudes creating disfavoring
response. More specifically, he defined the ‘‘atti-
tude heuristic’’ as the use of the evaluative relation-
ship as a cue for assigning objects to a favorable
class or an unfavorable class, thus leading to
approach or avoidance strategies appropriate to
the class. Pratkanis described numerous phenom-
ena that could be explained by the attitude heuris-
tic, including halo effects not unlike the consistency
described earlier between risk and benefit judg-
ments (Finucane et al., 2000).
Other important work within the field of social
cognition includes studies by Fazio (1995) on the
accessibility of affect associated with attitudes
and by Schwarz and Clore (1988) on the role of
affect as information.
Returning to the recent literature on judgment
and decision making, Kahneman and colleagues
have demonstrated that responses as diverse as
willingness to pay for the provision of a public
good (e.g., protection of an endangered species)
or a punitive damage award in a personal injury
lawsuit seems to be derived from attitudes based
on emotion rather than on indicators of economic
value (Kahneman and Ritov, 1994; Kahneman
et al., 1998).
Hsee and Kunreuther (2000) have demon-
strated that affect influences decisions about
whether or not to purchase insurance. In one
study, they found that people were willing to pay
twice as much to insure a beloved antique clock
(that no longer works and cannot be repaired)
against loss in shipment to a new city than to
insure a similar clock for which ‘‘one does not
have any special feeling’’. In the event of loss,
the insurance paid $100 in both cases. Similarly,
Hsee and Menon (1999) found that students were
more willing to buy a warranty on a newly pur-
chased used car if it was a beautiful convertible
than if it was an ordinary looking station wagon,
even if the expected repair expenses and cost of
the warranty were held constant.
Loewenstein et al. (2001) provide a particularly
thorough review and analysis of research that sup-
ports their ‘‘risk-as-feelings hypothesis’’, a concept
that has much in common with the affect heuristic.
They present evidence showing that emotional
responses to risky situations, including feelings
such as worry, fear, dread, or anxiety, often diverge
from cognitive evaluations and have a different and
sometimes greater impact on risk-taking behavior
than do cognitive evaluations. Among the factors
that appear to influence risk behaviors by acting
on feelings rather than cognitions are background
mood (e.g., Johnson and Tversky, 1983; Isen,
1993), the time interval between decisions and their
outcomes (Loewenstein, 1987), vividness (Hend-
rickx et al., 1989), and evolutionary preparedness.
Loewenstein et al. invoke the evolutionary perspec-
tive to explain why people tend to react with little
fear to certain types of objectively dangerous stim-
uli that evolution has not prepared them for, such
as guns, hamburgers, automobiles, smoking, and
unsafe sex, even when they recognize the threat at
a cognitive level. Other types of stimuli, such as
caged spiders, snakes, or heights, which evolution
may have prepared us to fear, evoke strong visceral
responses even when we recognize them, cogni-
tively, to be harmless.
Individual differences in affective reactivity also
are informative. Damasio relied upon brain-dam-
aged individuals, apparently lacking in the ability
to associate emotion with anticipated outcomes,
to test his somatic-marker hypothesis. Similar
insensitivity to the emotional meaning of future
outcomes has been attributed to psychopathic
individuals and used to explain their aberrant
behaviors (Hare, 1965; Patrick, 1994). Using the
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
Damasio card-selection task, Peters and Slovic
(2000) found that normal subjects who reported
themselves to be highly reactive to negative events
made fewer selections from decks with large losing
payoffs. Conversely, greater self-reported reactiv-
ity to positive events was associated with a greater
number of selections from high-gain decks. Thus
individual differences in affective reactivity appear
to play a role in the learning and expression of
risk-taking preferences.
3. The downside of affect
Throughout this paper we have made many
claims for the affect heuristic, portraying it as the
centerpiece of the experiential mode of thinking,
the dominant mode of survival during the evolution
of the human species. But, like other heuristics that
provide efficient and generally adaptive responses
but occasionally lead us astray, reliance on affect
can also deceive us. Indeed, if it was always optimal
to follow our affective and experiential instincts,
there would have been no need for the rational/ana-
lytic system of thinking to have evolved and become
so prominent in human affairs.
There are two important ways that experien-
tial thinking misguides us. One results from the
deliberate manipulation of our affective reactions
by those who wish to control our behaviors. The
other results from the natural limitations of the
experiential system and the existence of stimuli in
our environment that are simply not amenable to
valid affective representation. Both types of prob-
lems are discussed below.
3.1. Manipulation of affect in our daily lives
Given the importance of experiential thinking it
is not surprising to see many forms of deliberate
efforts being made to manipulate affect in order
to influence our judgments and decisions. Con-
sider, for example, some everyday questions about
the world of entertainment and the world of con-
sumer marketing:
1. Why do entertainers often change their
names?
1347
Answer: To make them affectively more pleas-
ing. One wonders whether the careers of John
Denver, Sandra Dee, and Judy Garland would
have been as successful had they performed
under their real names—Henry Deutschendorf,
Alexandra Zuck, and Frances Gumm. Students
of onomastics, the science of names, have found
that the intellectual products of persons with
less attractive names are judged to be of lower
quality (Harari and McDavid, 1973; Erwin
and Calev, 1984) and some have even asserted
that the affective quality of a presidential candi-
date’s name influences the candidate’s chances
of being elected (Smith, 1997).
2. Why do movies have background music? After
all, can’t we understand the events we are
watching and the dialog we are hearing without
music?
Answer: Music conveys affect and thus
enhances meaning even for common human
interactions and events.
3. Why are all the models in the mail-order catalog
smiling?
Answer: To link positive affect to the clothing
they are selling.
4. Why do packages of food products carry all
those little blurbs such as ‘‘new’’, ‘‘natural’’,
‘‘improved’’, or ‘‘98% fat free’’?
Answer: These are ‘‘affective tags’’ that enhance
the attractiveness of the product and increase
the likelihood it will be purchased, much as
adding ‘‘Save 98%’’ increased the attractiveness
of saving 150 lives.
Clearly entertainers and marketers of consumer
products have long been aware of the powerful
influence of affect. Perhaps no corporate entities
have more zealously exploited consumers’ affective
sensitivities than the tobacco companies. A recent
ad for Kool Natural Lights, for example, repeats
the word ‘‘natural’’ thirteen times in a single
half-page advertisement. The attractive images of
rugged cowboys and lush waterfalls associated with
cigarette ads are known to all of us. Indeed, affec-
tive associations between cigarettes and positive
images may begin forming in children as young
as three years old (Fischer, 1991). As Epstein
(1994) observes, ‘‘Cigarette advertising agencies
1348 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
and their clients are willing to bet millions of dol-
lars in advertising costs that the . . . appeal of their
messages to the experiential system will prevail
over the verbal message of the Surgeon General
that smoking can endanger one’s life, an appeal
directed at the rational system’’ (p. 712). Through
the workings of the affect heuristic, as explicated
by Finucane et al. (2000), we now have evidence
suggesting that cigarette advertising designed to
increase the positive affect associated with smoking
will quite likely depress perceptions of risk. The
factual (impassionate) appeal by the Surgeon Gen-
eral will likely have little effect.
Attempts at affective manipulation often work
directly on language. Communicators desiring to
change attitudes toward stigmatized technologies,
for example, created ‘‘nukespeak’’ to extol the vir-
tues of ‘‘clean bombs’’ and ‘‘peacekeeper missiles’’,
while promoters of nuclear power coined a new
term for reactor accidents: ‘‘excursions’’. Geneti-
cally modified food has been promoted as
‘‘enhanced’’ by proponents and ‘‘frankenfood’’
by opponents.
Manipulation of attitudes and behavior by per-
suasive argumentation is often quite effective, but
at least it tends to be recognized as an attempt to
persuade. Manipulation of affect is no less power-
ful but is made more insidious by often taking
place without our awareness. It is unlikely that
Hsee’s subjects recognized that what they were
willing to pay for the used music dictionary was
determined far more by the torn cover than
by the more important dimension, number of
entries.
Legal scholars such as Hanson and Kysar
(1999a,b), paying close attention to research on
affect and other judgment heuristics, have begun
to speak out on the massive manipulation of con-
sumers by the packaging, marketing, and public
relations practices of manufacturers. Such manip-
ulation, they argue, renders ineffective three pri-
mary forms of legal control over dangerous
products—warning requirements, product liability
suits, and regulation of advertising. Hanson and
Kysar (2001) point to the need for new regulatory
strategies that would take into account the full lia-
bility of manufacturers who manipulate consumers
into purchasing and using hazardous products.
3.2. Failures of the experiential system: The case
of smoking
Judgments and decisions can be faulty not only
because their affective components are manipula-
ble, but also because they are subject to inherent
biases of the experiential system. For example,
the affective system seems designed to sensitize us
to small changes in our environment (e.g., the dif-
ference between 0 and 1 deaths) at the cost of mak-
ing us less able to appreciate and respond
appropriately to larger changes (e.g., the difference
between 570 deaths and 670 deaths). Fetherston-
haugh et al. (1997) referred to this insensitivity as
‘‘psychophysical numbing’’.
Similar problems arise when the outcomes that
we must evaluate change very slowly over time, are
remote in time, or are visceral in nature. The irra-
tionality of decisions to smoke cigarettes provides
dramatic examples of these types of failure (Slovic,
2001).
Despite the portrayal of beginning smokers as
‘‘young economists’’ rationally weighing the risks
of smoking against the benefits when deciding
whether to initiate that activity (e.g., Viscusi,
1992), recent research paints a different picture.
This new account (Slovic, 2001) shows young smok-
ers acting experientially in the sense of giving little
or no thought to risks or to the amount of smoking
they will be doing. Instead, they go with the affective
impulses of the moment, enjoying smoking as some-
thing new and exciting, a way to have fun with their
friends. Even after becoming ‘‘regulars’’, the great
majority of smokers expect to stop soon, regardless
of how long they have been smoking, how many cig-
arettes they currently smoke per day, or how many
previous unsuccessful attempts they have experi-
enced. Only a fraction actually quit, despite many
attempts. The problem is nicotine addiction, a con-
dition that young smokers recognize by name as a
consequence of smoking but do not understand
experientially until they are caught up in it.
The process of becoming addicted appears to
begin surprisingly soon after one begins to smoke.
Recent research indicates that adolescents begin to
show signs of nicotine dependence within days to
weeks of the onset of occasional tobacco use (Di-
Franza et al., 2000).
 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352 1349

Loewenstein (1999) explains the process of These disturbing findings underscore the dis-
addiction as being governed by immensely power- tinction that behavioral decision theorists now
ful visceral factors or cravings that, from an expe- make between decision utility and experience util-
riential perspective, are very hard to anticipate and ity (Kahneman, 1997; Kahneman and Snell, 1992;
appreciate: Loewenstein and Schkade, 1999). Utility predicted
or expected at the time of decision often differs
Unlike currently experienced visceral factors,
greatly from the quality and intensity of the hedo-
which have a disproportionate impact on behav-
nic experience that actually occurs.
ior, delayed visceral factors tend to be ignored or
severely underweighted in decision making.
Today’s pain, hunger, anger, etc. are palpable, 4. Conclusion
but the same sensations anticipated in the future
receive little weight. (p. 240) We hope that this rather selective and idiosyn-
cratic tour through a mélange of experiments
The failure of the experiential system to protect
and conjectures has conveyed the sense of excite-
many young people from the lure of smoking is
ment we feel toward the affect heuristic. This heu-
nowhere more evident than in the responses to a
ristic appears at once both wondrous and
survey question that asks smokers: ‘‘If you had it
frightening: wondrous in its speed, and subtlety,
to do all over again, would you start smoking?’’
and sophistication, and its ability to ‘‘lubricate
More than 85% of adult smokers and about 80%
reason’’; frightening in its dependency upon con-
of young smokers (ages 14–22) answer ‘‘no’’ (Slo-
text and experience, allowing us to be led astray
vic, 2001). Moreover, the more individuals per-
or manipulated—inadvertently or intentionally—
ceive themselves to be addicted, the more often
silently and invisibly.
they have tried to quit, the longer they have been
It is sobering to contemplate how elusive mean-
smoking, and the more cigarettes they are smoking
ing is, due to its dependence upon affect. Thus the
per day, the more likely they are to answer ‘‘no’’.
forms of meaning that we take for granted and
We can now address a central question posed
upon which we justify immense effort and expense
by Viscusi (1992): ‘‘. . . at the time when individu-
toward gathering and disseminating ‘‘meaningful’’
als initiate their smoking activity, do they under-
information may be illusory. We cannot assume
stand the consequences of their actions and make
that an intelligent person can understand the
rational decisions?’’ Viscusi went on to define the
meaning of and properly act upon even the sim-
appropriate test of rationality in terms of
plest of numbers such as amounts of money, not
‘‘. . . whether individuals are incorporating the
to mention more esoteric measures or statistics,
available information about smoking risks and
unless these numbers are infused with affect.
are making sound decisions, given their own pref-
Contemplating the workings of the affect heu-
erences . . .’’ (p. 11).
ristic helps us appreciate Damasio’s (1994) conten-
The data indicate that the answer to Viscusi’s
tion that rationality is not only a product of the
question is ‘‘no’’. Most beginning smokers lack
analytical mind, but of the experiential mind as
the experience to appreciate how their future selves
well:
will perceive the risks from smoking or how they
will value the tradeoff between health and the need The strategies of human reason probably did not
to smoke. This is a strong repudiation of the model develop, in either evolution or any single individ-
of informed rational choice. It fits well with the find- ual, without the guiding force of the mechanisms
ings indicating that smokers give little conscious of biological regulation, of which emotion and
thought to risk when they begin to smoke. They feeling are notable expressions. Moreover, even
appear to be lured into the behavior by the pros- after reasoning strategies become estab-
pects of fun and excitement. Most begin to think lished . . . their effective deployment probably
of risk only after starting to smoke and gaining depends, to a considerable extent, on a continued
what to them is new information about health risks. ability to experience feelings. (p. xii)
1350 P. Slovic et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) 1333–1352
Ironically, the perception and integration of
affective feelings, within the experiential system,
appears to be the kind of high-level maximization
process postulated by economic theories since the
days of Jeremy Bentham. These feelings form the
neural and psychological substrate of utility. In
this sense, the affect heuristic enables us to be
rational actors in many important situations. But
not in all situations. It works beautifully when
our experience enables us to anticipate accurately
how we will like the consequences of our decisions.
It fails miserably when the consequences turn out
to be much different in character than we
anticipated.
The scientific study of affective rationality is in
its infancy. It is exciting to contemplate what
might be accomplished by future research designed
to help humans understand the affect heuristic and
employ it beneficially.
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